Somewhere Out There(28)

“Don’t f*ck up,” he told me, and sent me on my way. I had a little cash in my pocket, “gate money,” they called it, so I waited for the bus at the downtown Metro station that would take me to my childhood home. Even though I’d been away from the city less than a year, things looked so different—buildings seemed bigger and taller somehow, crosswalks filled with more people, and the streets busy with more cars. After months of having to follow a precise schedule, of daily head counts and bunk inspections, I marveled at the freedom of being able to board the bus, drop in my fifty-five cents, and ride wherever I wanted. A few times I found myself glancing over my shoulder, looking for a guard.

When my bus came, I sat in the very back, staring up at the advertising posters glued near the ceiling, including one with a picture of Harrison Ford for a movie called Raiders of the Lost Ark. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d been to a theater; it was probably when I was still with Michael and pregnant with Brooke. Another poster immediately caught my eye: it was a picture of a red-haired little girl with long braids who wore denim overalls and held a structure built out of Legos. The white lettering on the ad proclaimed, WHAT IT IS IS BEAUTIFUL. Before I knew it, I had tears in my eyes, wondering if Brooke liked to play with Legos, or if she preferred the company of dolls. Perhaps she enjoyed both . . . or neither. There was no way for me to know.

At least they’re together, I told myself. At least they have each other. I kept my eyes down for the rest of the ride, and after I got off the bus at the appropriate stop, my stomach twisted as I walked the two blocks to the house I’d grown up in—a two-bedroom, dark brown, rectangular box of a 1950s rambler. The August sun beat down on my skin; drops of sweat beaded at the nape of my neck and dripped down my back. It was almost four o’clock, and I figured my mother would be home. That was, if she was still working the early shift as a pharmacy clerk at Pay ’n Save. She had a new husband—I supposed it was possible she had a new job. She could have moved somewhere else entirely.

But then I saw her car parked in the driveway—a dark green, two-door VW Rabbit—and I knew she was there. I ran over the things I thought I should say, the words I hoped would help her forgive me. I was her daughter, for god’s sake. She had to forgive me—isn’t that what mothers are programmed to do? I imagined if my father hadn’t left us, he would have fought for me to stay when I got pregnant with Brooke. He would have been on my side. He would have helped make everything okay. That was the story I told myself. The way I wished things might have been.

With my pulse racing, I stood on the front porch and knocked, wondering what I would say if my mother’s new husband appeared. I had to assume she’d told him about me, but I didn’t know if his distaste for children extended to after they’d become adults.

Fortunately, my mother was the one who opened the door. When she did, her eyes widened and her jaw dropped. “Jenny,” she said, still gripping the knob. Her dark curly hair was pulled back from her face with a white plastic banana clip, and she wore a puffy-shouldered blue blouse with a high, ruffled collar tucked into black stirrup pants. At thirty-eight, except for a few more lines across her forehead and around her mouth, she looked almost exactly the same as she had when I was growing up—short and curvy, with the same violet eyes she passed on to me. If she and I stood in a room together with a hundred other people, there would be no doubt that we were related.

“Hi, Mom,” I said. My voice shook as I tried to smile.

“What are you doing here?” she asked. She glanced behind her and then looked back at me, moving the door a few inches toward shut.

“I need to talk with you,” I said. “So much has happened and I just—”

“I know what happened,” she said, cutting me off. “The woman from Social Services told me you were going to jail and wanted me to take care of your kids.”

“I didn’t ask her to do that. She was required to. I told her what your answer would be.” She didn’t respond, so I continued. “She said you got married again.”

“I did.”

“What’s his name?” I asked, shifting my feet, unsure what I should do with my hands. It felt awkward, standing on the front porch of the house I’d lived in for so many years, wondering if she was going to invite me inside.

“Derek.”

“I’d love to meet him.”

“He’s asleep.” She glanced behind her into the house, again, then looked back at me. “He works the swing shift at Boeing.”

“Did you tell him about me?”

“Of course,” she said. “I tell him everything. He’s the best thing that’s ever happened to me.”

I kept silent, feeling a sharp pain in my chest as I remembered that before I got pregnant with Brooke, my mother used those exact same words to describe me.

She looked behind me, toward the street. “Where are they?”

“Who?”

“Your kids, Jenny.”

“Oh,” I whispered, dropping my eyes to the porch. “I don’t know.”

“You don’t know?” she repeated, leaning heavily on the last word.

“I gave them up. Signed away my rights.” I looked back up at her, my words trembling.

“Really?” she said, raising both of her dark eyebrows.